Runemaster is an intriguing prospect. It sees the team behind the niche but celebrated strategy franchises Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis take its emergent storytelling chops away from the pages of history and into the realm of fantasy, for a replayable tactical role-playing game with lore shaped by choice and a new world to discover each time.

The first choice in its Norse mythology-inspired world is arguably the most important, as it defines your allegiances and enemies. Different races will align with Thor or Loki, sides which want to either prevent or spur on the end of the world. But the decision is not so black or white.

"If you want to align with Loki and get it started, you're not necessarily evil," producer Linda Kiby told Digital Spy. "Some races are worst off in the world and they want to wipe everything clean and the world will get a fresh start."

Choice is a big part of Runemaster, and this emergent storytelling is one of its core pillars, as your actions, quest choices and personal traits will define the quests you're given.

While race can define the places you can go and people you can work with initially, it's not set in stone; interdependent race relations allow you to work with your enemies if you so choose.

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"The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Kiby explained. "If you are human and you want to make friends with the trolls, your initial enemies, you're going to have to be really mean to the trolls' other enemies.

"For example you can start to kill other humans, which is going to make the trolls think, 'Well, maybe you're okay!' But the humans are going to hate you of course."

You don't have to kill your own kind to get what you want, though. If your relationship with a troll city improves, for example, then the entire race will gradually come onto your side as well, opening quests with them.

Exploration is another pillar of Runemaster, where each of the six worlds is procedurally generated to be "entirely different" for each playthrough.

Alongside the emergent storytelling, it's another way of providing a truly replayable experience, and a deep one at that. A single runthrough of Runemaster is estimated to take around 100 hours.

"[It's] because that's the kind of RPGs we want to play, and we want to make one of these games we want to play," said Kiby.

"We don't have pieces of the puzzle that we collect. Everything is completely dynamic."

For those who want to revisit the same world, using the same seed will recall the same maps, while Runesmaster is designed so that "almost everything can be modded".

The world has you traverse worn paths through dense forests, troll caves and sunken ships, and while it has the look of Diablo in its exploration, combat takes place on a separate screen, instigated by approaching enemies in the field as they patrol, hunt or guard chests and portals.

Battles will be similar to those in Heroes of Might and Magic, with a hex-grid and terrain and obstacles that impact the way you and the many squads you've amassed on your journey fight.

While specifics of combat are still under wraps due to Runemaster's pre-alpha state, lead programmer Johan Andersson said the team has cut its teeth on combat balancing due to its previous work in grand strategy.

"We have very good experience in handling a large amount of entities at the same time in a game," Andersson explained.

"Like in Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis, there's thousands and thousands of units and countries and characters."

Despite the combat no-show and early images, Runemaster is supposedly out fairly soon, with a tentative release of next winter (early 2015), though the team isn't keen to name a specific date just yet.

Questions about a few other features were brushed over at this point, from multiplayer ("technically it works" but might not be right for the single-player game the team is planning to make) and a possible console edition (it'll certainly support a control pad on PC).

Regardless of final features and release date, Runemaster sounds promising.

It feels like a culmination of Paradox Game Studio's expertise in various fields – the feel of exploring and mastering the vast world of Europa Universalis and the surprise open-ended stories that are possible in Crusader Kings - in a genre that's still comfortably niche but undeniably more mainstream, and could showcase the studio's talents to a wider, more willing audience.